February 8, 2012

"... at a depth of nearly 4,000 meters, reaching a critical stage in a decades-long drilling project... Lake Vostok is the largest of a network of hidden subglacial Antarctic lakes... It is also one of the largest lakes in the world."

Rumors that these lakes were also home to secret German submarine bases during World War II are also being revisited in the wake of renewed excitement, driven by Nazi claims that they had created an "unassailable" Antarctic fortress and by archival evidence describing the construction of ice caves.

No Nazis in the NYT report, which pays attention to the threat of pollution from the kerosene and Freon used in the drilling and the prediction — which was supposedly correct — that the borehole would freeze up, sealing in the chemicals, as soon as the drill reached the lake.

Seriously, the amount of kerosene and freon used wouldn't make a dicks world of difference in a subglacial lake of that size. It will be interesting to see what is down there, but I highly suspect that there will be nothing except maybe bacteria. I hope I'm wrong.

To clarify, and in the Times' favor, for once - they're not worried about "pollution" from the kerosene and freon; they're worried about contaminating the water samples and invalidating the entire point of the expedition.

There's no life on the surface to harm with pollution, and the overall health of the lake, if there was anything living in it, would be difficult to affect with such a small amount of kerosense.

(Freon is essentially inert in normal circumstances, and algae actually like to eat kerosene*, so it's not that huge of a problem anyway...

The statement that Lake Vostok has been "sealed by the ice for 20 million years" is questionable. Glaciers move, and I think I remember seeing other statements that there is no ice now existing on Earth that is much more than 400 years old.That would then also hold for the ice now in contact with the surface of the lake.

The geological evidence that Antarctica froze over about 33 million years ago. Even if not all the ice current present was there 33 million years ago, Lake Vostok has likely been sealed under ice for at least 20 million years, if not longer.

The current "Ice Age" is estimated to be about 2.7 million years old. The global temperatures prior to that would probably have varied within about the same range as in the last 2.7 million years, but at a 10-15 degrees C higher level.Have they proved that Antarctica stayed frozen over in the peak warm periods?

Vostok StationThe lake water is believed to have been sealed off under the thick ice sheet about 15 million years ago. Initially, it was thought that the same water had made up the lake since the time of its formation, giving a residence time in the order of one million years.[17] Later research by Robin Bell and Michael Studinger from the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University suggested that the water of the lake is continually freezing and being carried away by the motion of the Antarctic ice sheet, while being replaced by water melting from other parts of the ice sheet in these high pressure conditions. This resulted in an estimate that the entire volume of the lake is frozen and removed every 13,300 years—its effective mean residence time.[23]

Drat, Hagar! If the water turns over every 13000 years or so, that means heavy water hasn't concentrated at the bottom. Just think, 22 million years of tritium settling out in the bottom of a lake now breached by Russians! Would have make a terrific cold war thriller.

Pressure does cause water to melt. (This has caused concern in Greenland as the ice sheet has increased in thickness, thus increasing pressure and outflows. It acts as a lubricant allowing the glacier to move more than it otherwise would, perhaps in a catastrophic way.) This is another factor that may cause ice to by cycled without uncovering a reservoir under the ice.